Popular Culture Review
72
looking, then tied back by the G- string. (Paulson & Simpson,
1996, p. 118)
Skippy LaRue offers slightly more detail on the arcane art of masking sexual
markers:
[I’d] make a G-string out of a cloth table napkin. It was strong,
not like a regular G-string. Then you put your testicles up into
the sockets very carefully. You take your penis, wrap it in half
a Kleenex, then tie the Kleenex with elastic as tight as you can,
pull it back between your legs and up between your cheeks
even tighter, make a loop, just at your tailbone, then pull the
elastic around your waist and tie it at the back. The string gives
you the lips. Then you’ve got a pussy. (Paulson & Simpson,
1996, p. 118)
Because the entire orbit of performance is essentially based on creating an illusion,
it is impossible to get past the concern that the narratives flowing from these oral
histories might also be, at least in part, fictive. Even the stripper world adheres to
fairly standard notions of probity. Thus, there is likely to be a fair degree of what
might be called privacy associated with “suiting up.”
Today, the classic era of transvestite cross-dressing is largely a thing of
the past. For decades, the grand dames of the profession have been replaced by
“lip-cynch silicone Sallys,” relying on high camp, the old timers say, more than
talent and legerdemain. Interestingly, today’s striptease performance consumer will
still enjoy gossiping about men passing for women (at least away from the totally
nude clubs, which foil even the tightest elastic). The big topic of conversation now
concerns the sexual preference of the perfonners — currently often presumed to
be female but lesbian.
Center for the Study of Controversial Leisure
Jon Donlon
Notes
1.
2.
To date this is a fairly small number o f men, chosen as a sample o f convenience, and o f
(apparently) female dancers mostly, but not entirely, working in South Louisiana.
For Bninvand (1981) urban legends are “realistic stories concentrating on recent events
(or alleged events) with an ironic or supematural twist. They are an integral part o f
white Anglo- American culture and are told and believed by some o f the most
sophisticated ‘folk’ o f modem society young people, urbanites, and the well educated”
(p. xi).